Does Experience Make it True?
Experience is never a good excuse for ignoring the truth. In fact, when we choose to use our own experience as the ultimate evidence for our view of truth, we end up believing in things and defending things that may be set on sinking sand.
We’ve all heard someone say it. “I am an expert because I’ve experienced it!”
It’s the subtlety of pride that creeps up from our heart to dogmatically declare that our experience is the judge and jury on the truth. Ah, how human we truly are.
Have you ever responded to someone’s objective argument with the words, “Well, I’ve personally experienced it so that’s how I know it’s truth”? This sort of argument works wonderfully with your opinion about the quality of restaurant food, the beauty of exotic travel destinations, and knowing how your wife responds to spiders in the house, but it doesn’t make a great deal of sense with how we practice Christianity. The Bible isn’t subjective…it is objective. Experience doesn’t shape it – experience bows to it.
Anything and everything that the Christian experiences needs to be filtered through the text of Scripture.
It is a slippery slope to build your theological positions and opinions on experience – no matter how real the experience seems to be. For example, someone could claim that Jesus was a woman because he appeared to them in a vision and told them so, but the experience is shattered in light of biblical truth. He was a man – definitely, a man. The bible says that Mary bore “a son” (Luke 1:31), that He was the “Son of the Most High” (1:32) and that He was the “Son of God” (1:35). What part of His gender is unclear in the Bible? When my experience contradicts what the Bible says, I am under obligation to place my experience in a category far below the God-breathed, infinite, wisdom of the Almighty (Isaiah 40:8; 2 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 4:12). Right now our culture is waging war on truth because of experience. The world is doing it with gender, abortion, marriage – and, Christians do it too – with our sacred cow beliefs.
But aren’t we called to be different than the world?
God’s word is alive. Therefore, it is still the all-sufficient, life changing rule for faith and practice. No Christian reserves the right to change what God has said because they had an experience – that’s blasphemous at worst, arrogant at best. The facts of God’s word don’t care about your feelings, they inform your feelings. Yes, sometimes it’s hard to submit to God’s word as sinners saved by grace, but since when do Christians simply give up when things get hard? We’ve got the Ultimate Helper! Marriage is hard, but we look to the Holy Spirit for help. Controlling the tongue is hard, but we look to the Holy Spirit for help. Life is hard…and you get the point. Where we can’t reach the bar of obedience in relation to what the Bible says, grace fills in the gap and enables us to do so. You can trust the Scriptures even when it’s hard. You can submit to Scripture even when it’s hard. And you can leave behind old beliefs even when it’s hard.
The Holy Spirit is there to help us do what we cannot do on our own.
FACING THE TRUTH
When Defining Deception comes out on February 9th, Christians will have a decision to make. Many defenders of Third Wave/Charismatic chaos will use a variety of tactics for skirting around the truth. Some will avoid the truth. Some will butcher it. Others will diminish it. But what will you do?
We can argue with the research based on subjective feelings and personal experiences, or analyze the research based on the objective word of God. People may not agree on everything in the book, and that’s expected, but every Christian is responsible for viewing history, heresy, and emotional attachments to certain modern-day belief systems through the lens of Scripture. No matter how much the truth stings, the balm of unity comes through finding common ground in contending for the faith. Charismatics, Calvinists, and everyone in between need to get the essentials right at the very least – and that means bonding together to call certain movements and teachers what they are. It also means praying for their hearts to change if they’re still alive.
Admitting that a movement or a teacher is false doesn’t have to put them on our hate list. It should put them on our prayer list. We can protect ourselves from wolves, while disagreeing in a God-honoring way.
To help you grow in your ability to discern truth and error, numerous footnotes have been provided in the book. Every reader is encouraged to follow those footnotes to do further research, or whenever statements are made that contradict their own experience.
The following questions (in any variation) will guide those who desire to learn and be challenged in their growth by Defining Deception. You may even consider printing them out and keeping them handy while reading the book:
Does the evidence seem to provide a clear basis for the claim?
Do the facts surrounding the claim make me feel angry, insecure, or uncomfortable because it contradicts my own beliefs? Why do I think the author made such a claim? Has the author provide any reasoning for this?
Is my attachment to such a belief founded in a proper interpretation of the Scriptures? Have I adapted any portion of such a belief because I love and trust the teacher whom I learned from? Is that teacher accused of false teaching? What evidence is there to back this claim?
In what ways can this evidenced claim help me better understand the issues I am reading about? If something is true, and backed up by evidence, what is the next logical step?
Am I willing to sacrifice my own emotional attachments and insecurities in order to submit to what the Bible says? Who are the friends, family, and/or teachers who I can reach out to for help?
“…and all of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.
(1 Peter 5:5-7)
